1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an imaging distribution apparatus and imaging distribution method for converting information to image data and distributing the image data.
2. Description of the Related Art
TV receivers may be used in various ways. For example, a user may keep a TV receiver on for only some time he or she is looking and listening carefully at a specific TV program, or for only some time he or she is watching the program while doing something else. Alternatively, the user may keep the TV receiver on at all times, and repeat arbitrarily only listening to sound broadcast, glancing at the screen while listening to the sound, or looking carefully at the screen while listening to the sound. Otherwise, the user may keep the TV receiver on at all times, not attentively watching the program, but using the program as an ornamental image and a background music piece. TV receivers are kept on, in various places such as houses, stores and public facility.
In TV broadcasting service, there is a limitation that TV receivers can play back only the information to be transmitted by the TV stations. They can indeed receive and play back TV-broadcast information, but only a few programs that the existing broadcasting stations are broadcasting.
Now we can receive many information items other than the information items the TV stations broadcast. The existing networks, particularly the Internet, now enable us to obtain a variety of information, drastically changing the distribution of information. At present, an environment is being built, in which people in general (i.e., non-professional users) all over the world can not only receive information, but also transmit information. On the Internet, information items of various descriptions, from the political and economic reports to pleasure guides such as “Good Restaurants I Dined Last Week.” In addition, the Internet now enables users to receive various information items, compile them, express opinions on them, and other users to give comments on the opinions. An information distribution system in which ordinary people play leading roles can be said to be being built on a large data network called “Internet.”
Far more information is distributed on the Internet than from TV stations. Through the Internet, however, people cannot acquire information in such a passive way as obtaining information through TV receivers. To acquire information through the Internet, the user must be more active, sitting at desk, operating the keyboard to input retrieval key words, and then clicking the mouse. (In order to enjoy watching a TV program, he or she only needs to turn on the TV switch and the channel button at most, while lying on the sofa.) This difference may be best expressed by the everyday phrase of “We watch TV and obtains information through the Internet.”
To acquire desired information through the Internet and browse the information, the user should perform an action, first determining what kind of information he or she really wants, then inputting keywords related to the information he or she wants, thereby retrieving some information items, and finally selecting the very item he or she wants.
JP-A 2004-343683(KOKAI) and JP-A 2007-074158 (KOKAI) disclose apparatuses that handle multimedia data. These apparatuses display video data and text data and generate audio data, but only in their original form.
In order change the information displayed on the Internet browser screen, the user must perform an action. (If the user only activates the browser screen, the screen will keep displaying the same information at most.) Without the user's action, nothing will change on the browser screen.